Kansas City Missouri to Jacksonville Florida Halloween Postcard Cover 1908

Halloween's modern imagery, featuring witches, bats, and the full moon, draws from a complex tapestry of historical beliefs and practices. The figure of the witch, often depicted flying on a broomstick under a nocturnal sky, evolved from earlier European folklore and beliefs about malevolent figures, gaining particular prominence during the early modern witch hunts. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as Halloween transformed from its Celtic Samhain roots into a more secular holiday, the witch was largely reinterpreted as a whimsical, albeit still spooky, icon.

During the "Golden Age" of postcards (roughly 1900-1920), holiday-themed cards like this one played a crucial role in popularizing and standardizing Halloween traditions and iconography across North America and Europe. This period saw a shift from more ominous depictions to fanciful, often embossed, illustrations that blended traditional supernatural elements with a burgeoning sense of festive fun. Such postcards helped solidify the visual lexicon of Halloween, establishing the enduring association of witches, bats, and moonlit scenes with the autumnal celebration.